Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

The Narrative Fallacy writes "Cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss, director of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University, writes in the NY Times that with the investment needed to return to the moon likely to run in excess of $150 billion and the cost of a round trip to Mars easily two to four times that, there is a way to reduce the cost and technical requirements of a manned mission to Mars: send the astronauts on a one way trip. 'While the idea of sending astronauts aloft never to return is jarring upon first hearing, the rationale for one-way trips into space has both historical and practical roots,' writes Krauss. 'Colonists and pilgrims seldom set off for the New World with the expectation of a return trip.' There are more immediate and pragmatic reasons to consider one-way human space exploration missions including money. 'If the fuel for the return is carried on the ship, this greatly increases the mass of the ship, which in turn requires even more fuel.' But would anyone volunteer to go on such a trip? Krauss says that informal surveys show that many scientists would be willing to go on a one-way mission into space and that we might want to restrict the voyage to older astronauts, whose longevity is limited in any case. "

What was the overall success rate for getting a mission to mars? 50%? It'd suck to wait a year for a supply launch to be readied and launched, just to miss, and continue to drift off into space. There are other errors too. They could miss the landing zone by 1,000 miles. They could fail the reentry and have it burn up. And of course there's the chance of it getting stolen by aliens.:) In any situation other than getting nabbed by aliens, you've lost your supplies. 1,000 miles is an awful long way to trek with no gas stations, or roads.

Even still, they'll have to learn to be self sufficient. If they can supply themselves, it's far better than waiting for the next launch. Who knows what would happen. Eventually the mission could be scrapped, and they'd be left wondering if they'd get a new supply ship down. What if the economy finally tanks? Or if the US gets restructured (like, in a revolution). I'd hate to be on the ground there, and get the radio message "Sorry, World War 3 has broken out. By the time you get this message, there will be no survivors here. Good luck, you'll be the only surviving humans in the universe."

All that is with the assumption that everything is utopian at the landing site. Isolation from the rest of the human population can take it's toll. Consider ships at sea. A mutiny wasn't an unheard of thing, and they may have only been out for a few months at a time. Political unrest on a martian colony could be disastrous.

Food, drinking water, and oxygen will be the major limiting factors. That's assuming you can take along a habitat to mitigate the temperatures and dust storms. If the team lasts say 10 years, you'll run into other problems, like clothing and maintaining the shelter.

Presumably, there would be a mechanism for extracting a tolerable atmosphere for breathing and for growing food, and equipment for turning Martian dirt into agrochemicals. Essentially, Martian raw materials will be processed into food for plants, which will convert it into food for humans, who will convert it into shit. Only some of the shit can be recycled back into the soil (human shit is not as good for plants as horse shit is). After 10 years of dumping the surplus shit outside, you'll have made a good start on terraforming the local surroundings...
After sufficient time, Mars would be knee-deep in shit, and look just like Earth.

'Colonists and pilgrims seldom set off for the New World with the expectation of a return trip.'

Colonists heading to the new world were heading from a place of high resource (to live) contention to a place of low resource contention. A smart move if you wish to succeed--the resources were there for the taking. The astronauts, however, are not just heading to a place of higher resource contention they are heading to a place of no resources. None for living anyway. You might find platinum ore on Mars but you aren't going to find fur trapping, fishing and logging. This isn't little house on the prairie, this is the cold deadness of space.

You're sending them there on a one trip for one reason and one reason only: saving money. You're not sending them to a new world with more people there and more people coming and food everywhere ripe for the picking. They will eke out a miserable existence and remember earth fondly and try to be live off of what they are doing for humanity.

One big problem with that is that after a couple of years in zero G and 1/3 G the crew may not be able to move around on Earth without medical help. Aerobraking on return to Earth would expose them to 10G of acceleration and that could even be immediately fatal.

ESA plans: Another proposal for a joint mission with ESA is based on two spacecraft being sent to Mars, one carrying a six-person crew and the other the expedition's supplies. The mission would take about 440 days to complete with three astronauts visiting the surface of the planet for a period of two months.

Sure he was only going round and round and round Earth, but he was just as weightless as you'd be on the trip to Mars. So we already have had people in space for that long, and they didn't have two months at 1/3rd G in the middle to break up the zero-G stretch.

How the heck are those astro/cosmo/taikonauts going to find food and drinking water to subsist, let alone colonize?

I did a calculation one time about how much food we would have to stock for it to last the rest of our lives. It was entirely doable. If memory serves the cost for 20 years of food was something like $175,000 per person. Certainly within NASA's budget. You'd basically be packing enough consumables for a lifetime, which I'm guessing would be about the weight of the return fuel. Some rocket scientist here could give you a better estimate. They might be able to find ice on Mars for water, otherwise it's just another consumable. One that can be recycled to conserve.

Some kind of underground dwelling, nuclear power source. Excavating equipment to site it. Back up power source, maybe two back ups with an optional resupply in 10 years in case something bad happens. I know the Russians have small scale reactors that have been in service almost that long. Some satellites are still transmitting after 30+ years. An underground greenhouse with nuclear heat and solar power might even be able to produce plants and some spare oxygen. Martian atmosphere has plenty of CO2. If it was built right they might even have some natural light coming in through the roof.

With a resupply that consisted of manufacturing equipment, they might be able to make a go of it. Discovery of natural fibers probably isn't going to save them, but you take the good with the bad.

Foods can be stabilised for years such as military MREs (Meal: ready to eat) packets that can have a 3-5 year shelf life. But most of the essiential nutrients in food are prone to break down over time. This is before you consider the effects of ambient radiation speeding up this process.

Mars colonists would have no choice but to have a complete self contained bio recycling system right off the bat. And that manurfacturing capacity better be pretty comprehensive too, for everything from cleaning products through to chemotherapy drugs.

Massive quantities of supplies (and the equipment to build hydroponic or other renewable food supplies) from numerous care-packages sent from Earth.

I see no problem with the idea of sending several tons of stuff every month over the course of 10 years in cheap (slow) trajectories before sending a team to Mars. When they got there they'd have quite a bit of material to be able to use to build shelters & set up hydroponic farms, & basically have a spartan but survivable place. Even if hydroponics or other farming methods weren't possible, they could survive on tons of freeze-dried rations sent by dumb couriers.

Water is a problem, but again - tons of water sent (or, eventually, if it turns out to be feasible, scavenged from the planet itself) ahead of time. It could also double as a radiation barrier with some clever design. And water will need to be brought along anyway with the colonists - LOTS of water - to act as a radiation shield for the ship.

Though, to be honest, the real problem here is that we just won't try to develop real propulsion systems for use in space - Orion (not the new Orion, but the one from the 60's using nukes for propulsion) would be fantastic out in space...

While animals do taste great, meat is very inefficient in terms of how much energy goes into first growing the plants then growing the animal. It would be 10x more efficient to just grow soy beans and other high protein meat substitutes.

And 100x more efficient to grow hemp seed. Soy is not a complete protein, it contains only the proteins needed for the body to synthesize the rest. Aside from meat, hemp is the only complete protein. Soy also has to be prepared specially in order to unlock the protein, hemp seed does not.

Hemp seed is actually one of the few food stuffs that you can live off without having to eat anything else (aside from meat of course). Not that you would want but at least it tastes better than soy.

Nutritionists recently rediscovered hemp seed as a super food. The bird seed industry knew it a long time ago. Back when certain industries slipped in legislation to outlaw hemp (almost entirely unopposed since nobody at the time knew that marijuana was the same stuff growing in their fields) the birdseed industry caught on and convinced congress to make an exception for them by claiming songbirds wouldn't sing without hemp seed in the mix. That is where a lot of the pot seed in the 60's and 70's came from.

I thought this was interesting so just went to wikipedia's hemp page [wikipedia.org], which tells me hemp nut is around 30% protein by mass.

This information is cited in Wikipedia as sourced from http://www.wcranchohemp.com/info.php [wcranchohemp.com], which states the information is sourced from http://www.thehempnut.com/ [thehempnut.com], which is a site that sells hemp foods. The data no longer appears to be there though, so I am not sure exactly how it was gathered. A quick Google indicates that data has been spread all over the Internet as seems to form the basis of most nutritional assumptions, so YMMV with the data. This [drbronner.com] and this [earthfriendlygoods.com] have slightly different numbers that seem to agree.

Not sure if there's some sort of official authority for this sort of data that is reliable though !

ummm... speak for yourself. I think we should sell tickets to the live video stream to pay for the resupply missions. Make sure 80% of the crew is smoking hot babes and that everyone shares a single sleeping chamber under full view of the cameras (including a few the crew don't know about).

I think this is one instance where we can all agree that piracy would ultimately boost the ratings. I mean if nobody pays for the stream... no resupply...

They will eke out a miserable existence and remember earth fondly and try to be live off of what they are doing for humanity.

There's no delusions of extended survival mentioned. That doesn't take away what they would be doing for humanity though.

If we can figure out the kinks we have in our biodomes, I don't see why trying to start a colony there, even if it takes 3 or 4 seperate space missions of people willing to die for it - it would be as revolutionary as the moon landing.

If there is any nation willing to do this, it certainly won't be the US. We can't even let terminal patients die without wasting vast sums to slightly prolong their misery.

Hey, it's their money. I'd probably go on a drug and sex filled romp around the world until I dropped dead, but with the value of the dollar, that would probably be a bus ride to Tijuana and a guest appearance in a donkey show.
Anyone know where I can rent a donkey costume?

No, its about the legal industry. Doctors and hospitals are mostly fine with allowing terminally ill to die, but there are always lawyers who try to take the "patients best interests" to heart and sue to delay pulling the plug.

Which is what? This does nothing for humanity. It isn't like we don't know what is on Mars. We know exactly what Mars is like. For hundreds of billions of dollars we can send an almost limitless series of rovers equipped with a variety of instruments to explore and run tests. Having a couple of humans just trying to survive, is not going to provide a scientific breakthrough.

The only point of sending men to Mars is to prove the point that we can send men to Mars. It's the same reason most people run marathons or attempt to climb Mount Everest. You just want to know that you can do it.

Personally, I don't see the value in that (at least not a few lives and billions of dollars worth). Others may disagree and say that "because its there" is a good enough reason to try, but that still doesn't make it a breakthrough moment for humanity.

> The only point of sending men to Mars is to prove the point that we can send men to Mars.

Why we assume that those men/women will not figure out some better ways to survive, or develop better technology than in our terrestrial labs? To me the point is let a croud of people try to self-adapt (like the explorers in the artic, for example.) Since we never lived in Mars, we can't say that is not possible (despite the data and failures of the robots sent before.)

They're not loading up rockets with those dollars. That money is spent on research, design, engineering, and invention. Historically, the money spent on throttling men through space CANNOT be spent better when it comes to improving technology or your way of life. It's difficult to overestimate the importance that space travel has on your modern conveniences.

Historically, the money spent on throttling men through space CANNOT be spent better when it comes to improving technology or your way of life.

Unfortunately, the same can be said about war as a technology accelerant. It's why Hitler was Time magazine's Man of the Year, and almost won the Man of the Century, as the person who had the most impact on the 20th century. War gave us ARPANET which gave us the InnerToobs. War gave us the cold war which gave us the space race which gave us integrated circuits which gave us cpu-on-a-chip and vlsi circuitry and all the other goodness we enjoy today. War gave us the impetus to research ways to treat injuries quickly and effectively and stabilize patients in forward positions, which gave us better techniques to treat trauma. War gave us soldiers who had to be treated, and the budget and will to try to create more effective treatments. War gave us practical radar. War gave us practical ICBMs which gave us satellites. War gave us higher-strength metals.

But as humans, we'd be better off funneling the money into space. Problem is, we'd rather fight.

But as humans, we'd be better off funneling the money into space. Problem is, we'd rather fight.

Or rather you mean we'd rather live instead of being the target of whoever thinks their life would be better if they had someone else's stuff. The self hatred is strong within you. Is it just my impression or do people actually think that animals never fight each-other?

The only point of sending men to Mars is to prove the point that we can send men to Mars.

If we were only going to send men then you'd be correct. However the real, long term goal is to send women as well as men and establish a permanent colony. The reason for this is to hugely increase the survivability of our species and probably other species as well. Once we have a self-sustaining colony on Mars it becomes a lot harder for nature to wipe us out. Obviously you cannot just land a self-sustaining colony there all at once - or at least we cannot yet - so this is just the first of hopefully several steps along the path.

The only point of sending men to Mars is to prove the point that we can send men to Mars.

No. The point of sending men to Mars is to establish a foothold on another planet. It's a step toward colonization. Eventually humans will establish themselves throughout our solar system and use the resources we find there travel to the stars. Or we'll die out. There is no third choice.

Oh come on. You can do better than that. If you disagree, tell me what you think. Don't put your pretentious labels on me in lieu of a thoughtful argument.

Tell me how sending a few men and women to breathe their last breath on Mars with no hope of return to Earth benefits humanity. Tell me why there really is no better way to spend a few hundred billion dollars. Tell me what the scientific value is for having a few humans there versus hundreds of exploring rovers. If you want to participate in the discussion, then please think of something to say.

For the record, I think being able to colonize Mars is a fantastic goal. But colonizing means turning it into a self-sustaining long-term home. That is a far cry from the suicide missions being proposed. We are so far from being self-sustaining on Mars that there is no point in talking about sending men there. Show me a machine that can generate enough oxygen and water for people to survive (you have to grow your own food, too). Show me how we can generate sufficient electricity, even in the Martian winter. Show me that we can land heavy equipment very near other equipment and people with pinpoint accuracy. When we master those things (and more), then we can start thinking about getting people there.

Convict ships used to take six months at sea to travel from England to Australia and no the convicts weren't allowed off at the distant supply harbours.

The first attempts to cross the Arctic and Antarctic required more mental strength than you suggest would be needed for mars mission. Considering that they were in pretty much imminent danger at all times and had absolutely *no* technology to help do it or even know where they were to any great degree.

Some of the comments on here are very telling of what the western middle class has become. Just because you can't imagine having the mental and physical strength to survive life outside your safe, over privileged looked after cradle to grave existence doesn't mean it isn't possible. And compared to the feats of men of history, sitting in a comfortable capsule with new tech to keep you entertained, being able to speak to your loved ones and teams of specialists daily and having plenty of food is so far from being comparable to say crossing a desert or the arctic by foot pulling a four hundred kilo wooden boat full of supplies for six months or being lost at sea for months as to almost be a joke.

Asia is going to absolutely *dominate* the west over the next few years if this attitude continues.

We haven't, though. We've landed there. We've brought a few rocks home. We've had some catastrophes and near-catastrophes. But no one has actually lived there.

It seems like it'd make more sense to colonize the moon - perhaps to the extent that we can launch from there, where we don't have to fight gravity nearly as much - before taking on another planet. We'd get a bunch of data on living (and coping with living) in near-zero G, they'd have a chance to work out any kinks in their theories on survival in a hostile climate, and still not be 9 months from home. It'd be a great way to prepare for the rest of the planets, I should think. I mean, if we can make a rock with no atmosphere habitable, that'd be a big freaking breakthrough.

I don't work for NASA, however; nor have I memorized every mission they've publicized. So maybe I'm missing something. If that's the case, by all means, enlighten me.

Also, about the muscles degenerating in a (far) lower gravity situation, as long as it's not zero G, couldn't they wear weights (i.e., like weighted vests, pants, whatever) to offset the lower gravity? We do that now, on Earth, for resistance training. It would seem like they would just need to add more weight - again, so long as it's not zero gravity.

The astronauts, however, are not just heading to a place of higher resource contention they are heading to a place of no resources. None for living anyway. You might find platinum ore on Mars but you aren't going to find fur trapping, fishing and logging.

Living resources might not matter as much if you can find other resources that make the enterprise economically viable. Every single British attempt at colonizing the New World failed (in spite of the ability to trap, fish, log, etc) until they find a profitable product [wikipedia.org]. Once they found that the settlements took off and the rest is history as the saying goes. There are lots of potential profitable products out in the solar system right now -- there will be even more if we are indeed running out of resources [slashdot.org] here at home.

I doubt we'll see anything resembling colonization in our lifetimes (it took generations to carry that out right here on Earth in a much more friendly environment) but I do think it will happen eventually. We should be laying the groundwork for it and soaking up as much knowledge as we possibly can.

Great, so now the astronaut gets there and discovers a vast wealth of economic resources. That's wonderful. Now he can use them to.....trade for things that the other astronauts on his ship brought with them? Oh wait, they've found the vast resources on Mars, too.

Who knows what profitable product there might be on mars? Nobody knew what profitable products existed in the New World until they came here. Are you really going to claim that in the entire solar system there isn't one single resource that could be profitably exploited by mankind?

I read somewhere once upon a time that it takes more fuel to get to Mercury than it does to leave the solar system entirely. You gain too much speed falling into the gravity well of the sun and Mercury has no atmosphere to help you slow down.

Extremely well put. There's little on Mars to bootstrap a civilization with. Back in the pioneer days, you could show up with nothing more than the clothes on your back, a hatchet, a musket, a small chunk of lead, and a shot mold (plus a little food and water to keep you going until you got settled). Earlier human settlers didn't even bring such modern weaponry with them and did just fine, knapping knives and spearpoints and arrowheads.

That sort of thing doesn't work on Mars. Colonists will be entirely dependent on modern technology to merely keep the things that keep them alive running. Try tracing back random pieces of modern technology to all of their component parts/materials, and all of those's component parts/materials, and so forth, with the components needed for manufacturing/refining along the way, and if any of those are consumable, trace those back. The challenge of building a colony is ridiculously daunting. This wouldn't be a colony; it's going to be a base. A cramped life support shelter with more and more things breaking every year. They'll be living largely off what they brought from Earth and what gets sent as resupply until the day they die (with the possible exception of local ice and a few other things).

Yeah, and *none* of these being even remotely qualified or even sane enough for the job. Who's willing to throw his very existence away for a few weeks or months on Mars just has no idea what he's actually talking about and very probably has many other illusions as well. You're not really thinking that you can successfully train someone to do the year-long transfer flight to Mars just to die there? You'd risk that they would be *begging* to do just a fly-around and come back instead after they've been through this. Everyone sane enough to manage that task would be too sane to do a one-way mission.

I would.I am 30 and moderately well off. If I was offered the chance to live on Mars with some hope of continued sustenance from resupplies, I would take it. It would be the ultimate challenge to try to make the biodome self sufficient with local chemicals.I would perhaps regret my decision when I run out of oxygen because of missed launch window on earth, but still: I'd take it.

Also, the battle royal of who is going to be eaten with other scientist on board us

You didn't do what I stated. Tracking *everything back*, and everything needed to make that, and so forth. Let's just say, for example, you needed to make a replacement teflon seal. Let's go with a greatly oversimplified version. You first need a fluorspar mine. The fluorspar enters a crusher. It can then optionally undergo dense material separation (the ore is poured into a substance slightly denser than fluorspar's 1.4 g/cm^3 density, so it floats to the top; on Mars, this would probably best be organic farm-produced liquids, such as oils, or perhaps dense petroleum compounds). It then goes to a ball mill where it is crushed to a fine powder, and mixed into a slurry. Then any number of the following can happen: the slurry can be slowly pumped upwards in a jig; the lighter materials like fluorspar make it to the top more readily than the heavier contaminants. The slurry can go on to a shaking table - an expanse with riffles parallel to the flow which vibrates; the heavy minerals get deposited on earlier riffles (the vibration encourages them to move of tothe side).

After the fluorspar is concentrated by any number of the above, it is mixed with a slight excess of 93-99% sulfuric acid in a kiln in acontinuous process. HF gas is released, leaving tailings of silica, carbon, sulfur, calcium carbonate, phosphorus pentoxide, and a host of othertailings generally not worth recovering mixed in with bulk fluorogypsum.

Gaseous HF is condensed enough to liquify it to remove impurities such as SO2 and SiF4, which remain gasseous. The condensed HF is 99.98%pure. The exhaust gasses, which still contain some HF, are mixed with sulfuric acid in an absorption column. The sulfuric acid is then mixed backin with the original process stream in another absorption column. This concentrates the fluorosilic acid and precipitates silica, which can then beremoved (and if desired, purified and used in other processes).

An alternative production route to HF is through using byproduct fluorosilicic acid, using a process developed by Kvaemer Process TechnologyAG of Switzerland. The fluorosilicic acid is concentrated and reacted with concentrated sulfuric acid to produce a mixture of SiF4, HF andH2SO4. This is fed into the same concentration/scrubbing system described above.

In either method, the concentration of the recirculating sulfuric acid must be maintained. Integration with the sulfuric acid productionprocess would be nice to this effect.

Note that hydrofluoric acid is best stored in plastic or teflon-coated containers. It has varying degrees of compatabilities withmetals (lead works reasonably well), but famously eats through glass despite being a weak acid (the fluorine ion is more problematic than the hydrogenion). In addition to this, all general concentrated acid storage methods should apply.

Now we need sulfuric acid.

Sulfuric acid is a fundamental industrial chemical. While many methods have been discovered throughout the ages for sulfuric acidproduction, one of the most promising for Mars is "relatively" simple. Iron sulfates are heated in the presence of oxygen and steam. The sulfatesabsorb progressively more oxygen, before finally releasing a sulfur trioxide and leaving behind iron oxide. The sulfur trioxide combines with the steamand enters a condenser lined with many radiators/heat exchangers, where it precipitates out as concentrated sulfuric acid. The input iron sulfates arecycled through in a batch process, with new sulfates added into the reaction chamber at the top and hot iron oxide removed from the base (which can thenbe sent on to steel production).

Potentially, raw, highly sulfur-rich iron ore could be ground in a ball mill, dumped into the reaction chamber, and baked; while some heatwould be wasted heating non-sulfates, it would pass straight into steel production from there, utilizing the gained heat. Note that the entiresystem, from the moment that the ore enters the reacti

The cost savings of a one-way trip are minuscule now as everyone has accepted that ISRU of propellant on Mars is an essential part of any mission plan. You don't take with you all the fuel you need to get back.. you make it there.. and most of the plans call for a fully fueled return-to-earth vehicle to be sitting ready on the surface before you send astronauts from Earth to it.

The real problem is radiation exposure. 6 months there, 500 days on the surface, 6 months back. Any astronauts you send will never fly in space again and may have trouble getting x-rays for medical problems in the future. The only known solution to this is to make the habitat module more massive.. which of course requires more fuel...

The cost savings of a one-way trip are minuscule now as everyone has accepted that ISRU of propellant on Mars is an essential part of any mission plan. You don't take with you all the fuel you need to get back.. you make it there.. and most of the plans call for a fully fueled return-to-earth vehicle to be sitting ready on the surface before you send astronauts from Earth to it.

Why not just package it up from here on Earth, send it over to Mars and have it waiting for the astronauts? We've sent objects to Mars before (granted, with various outcomes)- why can't we send a fuel canister over there before we send any manned craft- we could either try to land it (probably not the best idea) or set it in orbit around the planet (probably better idea.)

OR -- best case scenario -- make use of natural caves. Mars has canyons which put the Grand Canyon to shame. To think that we can't find natural shelter on Mars is absurd. We need to stop thinking of the wide open terrain that our previous expeditions went to, and start thinking about places where radiation is minimal.

The medication works by suppressing the "suicide mechanism" of cells hit by radiation, while enabling them to recover from the radiation-induced damages that prompted them to activate the suicide mechanism in the first place.

That's pretty interesting. So our cells have the ability to repair radiation damage but don't normally bother to try? Any molecular biologists around who would care to explain this in more detail than the aforementioned link? I always thought that ionizing radiation damaged the body on a molecular level beyond any healing ability that it may have.

I agree. And what exactly would they be "doing for humanity" that remotely-controller/pre-programmed machines couldn't do?

There isn't much on Mars. Maybe there is some stuff to mine, but you don't need people for that. I suppose it could be terraformed, too, but again, you don't need people for that. As a test of our ability to send people to other planets, it isn't that great, either. We KNOW how to keep them alive. It's not hard, it's just expensive and time-consuming.

A smart move if you wish to succeed--the resources [in the Americas] were there for the taking.

Umm, no they weren't. The resources were controlled by a bunch of societies with millions of people. The attempts at colonization 1607 and 1620 were successful, but the resources in the Americas weren't just lying around free for the taking.

Consider also that at least 2 previous colonization attempts (Vinland and Roanoke) were wiped out, and the Massachusetts colony only barely survived its first winter in Plymouth.

'Colonists and pilgrims seldom set off for the New World with the expectation of a return trip.'
Indeed, they often did back in the old days, however, I am fairly confident that at the very least, they expected a breatheable atmosphere at their destination.

not only that but what exactly is the point of sending astronauts to another planet knowing the whole time they're doomed? Are we planning on not returning to Mars again? If that is the case why bother sending anyone at all. Mars is important as a potential second outpost in the solar system not just because of the pretty rocks there. Mars is important enough to return and thus sending people to their deaths to get there a few years earlier for a few dollars less sounds nigh despicable.

Well, you are here on Earth, you are one among millions, and you are going to die eventually. Why don't you just get the inevitable over and kill yourself right now. What's that? You value the experience of living too much? Oh, ok. Well, how do you think the guy that goes to mars is going to feel after doing very little day after day? Nowhere to go and nothing to do except sit in whatever tiny vessel he arrived in. The novelty is going to wear off pretty quick. He can't even do all that much exploring becau

And those going to Mars will also have a breathable atmosphere. It is just that it will be a limited confinement.

Look, just because you are afraid of the unknown, does not mean that others are. Many would willing give their life to help build an establishment for their country or just for science. When my children are adults and able to take care fo themselves, I would volunteer (though my wife is likely to nix that). Why? BECAUSE IT IS A BETTER FUTURE FOR ALL. We NEED to take RISKS. Without those, you do not have the opportunity to make huge discoveries.

Personally, I am tired of those that want to conqueror others on this planet for their resources (read murder), but then get upset about out taking risks that MIGHT kill a person. The west use to be heroic and be willing to get it done. Now, we act like our individual life is all that. Give me a break.

Indeed, they often did back in the old days, however, I am fairly confident that at the very least, they expected a breatheable atmosphere at their destination.

Not true! It's a little known fact that one of the reasons the Pilgrims were dependent on the natives for food that first Thanksgiving was because they'd wasted so much space in their ship's hold on canisters of compressed O2. You don't hear about this much, because the Pilgrims were so embarrassed when they first met the American Indians and wanted to know how they could survive without oxygen masks!

Just because there is no provision for returning to the Earth doesn't mean we cannot send as much help for survival as we can. Equipment and supplies to build structures, process waste water and grow food, generate power (nuclear, fusion, etc). Plus, if they could survive for a year or two, unmanned resupply missions could be sent out at regular periods until self-sustainability of the population on mars is established.

Really people, if you want to have a human colony on mars, these are the kinds of tough choices that MUST be made. If they asked, I'd go in an instant.

spending any more tax payer money to send humans into space, to the moon or mars, is a ridiculous waste considering the catastrophic infrastructure breakdowns we are now facing in real time.

In the short term, meaning next 20 years, this money would be much better spent repairing antiquated and unsafe bridges, damns, levies and sewage systems than it would be sending anyone to the moon or mars.

Significantly more people will benefit through lives saved and catastrophes averted by wisely spending money instead of wasting it in a time when what we have to gain from space exploration by humans is very little in comparison

I wonder what sort of economic boost a trillion dollars thrown at an international project to move human kind forward like going to the moon and mars by end of the next decade would have done for the U.S. and international economy vs. simply bailing out a bunch of paper tiger banks.

We don't even have a frigen way to get in to space anymore (or at least soon). We are back in the frigen 1950's space wise.

I don't see why we don't shoot a couple of modules to Mars right now...

1 that makes propellant from Martian atmosphere1 habitat module with some plants inside, some cameras, and an airlock.

If we get good at landing the modules closely enough together, we could send a robot tractor to try and drag the first two together, and if that works send a power plant that could use the fuel from the first one.

Not one person needs to be sent, and we could check if we're capable of putting down the basics of a Martian base for future use. We'd learn if we can really generate the fuel we think we could, if we can keep a habitat module in good shape for a few years at a time, etc. The power plant could just burn off the fuel just to show it works... or we could send some more power-hungry rovers and have them return to the power plant for refueling once in a while.

After learning what we can, you repeat with the next generation of modules, and eventually you have a ready-made camp waiting for the first human arrivals...

I have to say this is completely idiotic. Think about why you would want to send humans to Mars in this particular stage of scientific development. It is clear that there is not a practical reason. Anything useful that can be done on mars at this point of technological development of the human race can be done easier by robots than by humans. Even if your goal is to prepare mars for human colonization you will do this faster if you send robots first until you can build a base on mars that produces its own oxygen, food, water as well as fuel for the humans' return trip.

So why send humans now? Well the obvious answer is you do not send humans now. But let us assume for the moment that that we are to send humans. What is the only possible benefit for it? Well the only possible benefit is psychological, or spiritual or what have you. Just knowing that humans have stepped on Mars will make us all feel better about ourselves. And of course the country that sends the people first will have special propaganda benefits. Those were pretty much all the benefits of the moon landings. (And I am not knocking them, they were very real benefits, especially in the 60's when everyone in the US was scared of the Soviets)

Now lets think about it for a second. Will this benefit exist if we send someone on a ghastly mission to die on mars. Would we all feel better as human beings and/or as american citizens that we have sent someone on a suicide mission to mars. That we have exported one of our corpses to the red planet, if you will. Of course not. The idea of sending someone out all by themselves to die alone millions of miles from the nearest other human beings is just terrible. Nobody will be happy or uplifted by such a mission.

Therefore this type of mission would remove the only benefit of sending humans to Mars.

How to Live on Mars: A Trusty Guidebook to Surviving and Thriving on the Red Planet, by Robert Zubrin, Three Rivers Press (2008), Paperback, 224 pages, ISBN: 978-0307407184.

Once again, Zubrin delights and informs like no other. This concise, easy-reading, laugh-out-loud, little volume is packed with more solid scientific and engineering information about Mars, Mars exploration and settlement than even "The Case for Mars." Whereas the latter was informative and interesting, but fairly straight-laced, Zubrin here takes a decidedly more lighthearted approach, creating a fictional, early 22nd century guide to surviving and thriving on the new frontier.

As usual, Zubrin's strongest suit is his ability to turn his caustic wit against the foolish, timid, bureaucratic, cowardly, thoughtless paralysis which presently cripples the aerospace establishment, and indeed, Zubrin suggests, the entirety of terrestrial "civilization" (if what we have down here still merits the term.) Perhaps my favorite example is the following passage detailing water reclamation from the exhaust of a space suit's methanol/oxygen fuel-cell (used to provide electric power) in order to extend the endurance of Martians on EVA.

"The water you obtain will include a significant quantity of carbon dioxide in solution, which is why NASA has banned systems that plumb fuel-cell wastewater directly back to the suit canteen. However, despite the claimed medical problem, it is a fact that in the twentieth century, many people chose to drink carbonated water as a matter of preference."

I do not hold with those who regard Zubrin's political asides as an interruption of an otherwise interesting presentation of scientific or engineering information. Zubrin's ability to decisively skewer folly of all sorts, technical, medical, political, social, is the primary reason that he has always impressed me, and in my opinion, constitutes the single best feature of this particular book.

Zubrin's brutal and sustained critique of bureaucracy toward the end of "How to Live on Mars" is positively brilliant. If it doesn't make you yearn to give up the soul-destroying stagnation and conformity of Earth to live on a planet full of misfits, outcasts and rugged individualists, then there's just simply no trace of idealism, romance, nobility or heroism left in your black, flabby, little heart.

I'm pleased to see Zubrin take such a radical turn, or maybe simply to more openly embrace the radicalism which he has never been able to entirely prevent from seeping into his work. This one is not going to win Zubrin any friends in high places, but I suspect it will contribute to the immortality he achieves when the Martians (descended from pioneers who will make the first crossings in Mars-Direct inspired spacecraft) finally throw off their tyrannical Earthling overlords and establish a truly civilized branch of humanity for the first time in far too long.

The "cost" for returning the astronauts back into orbit from a Mars landing is often quoted as the limiting factor in going to Mars. The return trip from the moon landings was practical because of the low gravity of the moon relative to Earth (or Mars). This made it easy to carry enough fuel to enable a rocket boosted departure from the moon.

The mass of Mars is much greater than the moon and therefor the amount of fuel required to launch astronauts back into Martian orbit is prohibitive. But this thinking is inside the box; using the same method as we did for the moon as though it were the only possibility.

But once you can build an orbital elevator... You just need to build a second. Send the second up into orbit using the first and then place it on a trajectory into Marian geosynchronous orbit. Now the cost is negligible to return to Martian orbit.

The Orbital Elevator is essential to the evolution of space science. Yet we do practically nothing to develop it even though we have already discovered all the basic technologies that will be required. They just need significant refinement.

1. Professor Stephen Hawking is probably right, we do need to get off this rock, sooner rather than later. "It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species"

2. We evolved to survive on an unguided mudball, third rock out from a slightly variable star; we haven't found the thermostat yet. Sooner or later, our luck will run out, one natural extinction level event and it's game over.

3. It's worth boldly going somewhere that will probably kill you, if and only if, there is a damn good reason to be bold.

4. Our current space drive technology consists of throwing stuff as hard as we can in one direction so we get a bit of usable thrust in another. It's a losing game, a pathetically inadequate method, compared to our needs and dreams.

5. Mars has a deep gravity well, with an unbreathable, and (worse) unflyable atmosphere. We have no known scientific or commercial reason to go there, or means of survival if we did.

6. Robots are expendable, cheap to make, specialized, and inexpensive to remotely control, even in space. Humans, are expendable, cheap to make, generally useful, but ridiculously expensive to operate, especially in space.

7. Robot probes in space, historically have produced vastly more science per dollar expended, than humans. We should boldly go somewhere when we intend to colonize, not to send back wish you were here postcards...
8. To colonize, there must exist usable resources, in vast and accessible quantities, easy pickings. At minimum we will need Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen (CHON), plus metals, trace elements and usable energy. There must be shielding from radiation and the other obvious space hazards. Such resources do in fact exist in limitless abundance, in open space, as the larger comets and asteroids. The orbital vectors and masses (that we know about) are currently a little inconvenient.

IMHO:

a. We (Humans) need to invest heavily in science and engineering that may lead to much better space propulsion, techniques for mining and commercial and civic use of such open space accessible resources.

b. We need to develop much better remote probe and manipulation technology, so the robots can investigate anywhere we want, and possibly alter the orbits of low mass, high value objects, as cheaply as possible.

c. We need to develop space habitats, on comets and asteroids, to exploit their resources as a long term (effectively infinite) space habitat.

d. Our most likely cause of extinction as a species is our non-existent space colonization strategy. We are led by a clueless collection of dumbass politicians who cannot see beyond Buck Rogers pointy spaceship sci-fi and (much more importantly) their own short term military and pork barrel political aims. There is no coherent, international, long term, human survival and colonization oriented strategy.

e. When some damn big rock arrives at 5 miles per second, we are all going to look equally stupid and just as extinct; fossilized human politicians will look almost identical, as the "intelligent" humans remains.